The goal of medical education is to produce physicians who are prepared to serve the fundamental purposes of medicine. To this end, physicians must possess the attributes that are necessary to meet their individual and collective responsibilities to society. If medical education is to serve the goal of medicine, medical educators must develop learning objectives for medical education programs that reflect an understanding of those attributes.

To gain insight into society's expectations of physicians, reports issued by the Hastings Center and by a group of medical educators in Canada were reviewed carefully, and individual interviews were conducted with a group of scholars* of contemporary medicine in the United States. The Hastings Center report summarized the consensus views on society's expectations reached by the representatives of 14 countries that participated in the project. In the Canadian project, many citizen groups participated directly in the process that led to the definition of that society's expectations of physicians. Finally, each of the scholars who were interviewed contributed important perspectives on this issue based on their understanding of contemporary U.S. medicine.

These activities revealed that society's expectations of medicine have changed over time to reflect contemporary values. For more that a quarter of a century the medical profession and the society at large have perceived the goal of medicine to be largely the cure of disease; to a great extent, all other aspects of medicine have been subordinated to this purpose. This view has had a major impact on the way doctors have been educated and on the culture of the institutions responsible for their education. Our society now recognizes the need for a broader view and wants doctors who can and will attend equally well to all aspects of health care.

During the initial phase of the MSOP, a consensus was reached among leaders of the medical education community on the attributes that physicians need to meet society's expectations of them in the practice of medicine. Those attributes are:

• Physicians Must Be Altruistic
• Physicians Must Be Knowledgeable
• Physicians Must Be Skillful
• Physicians Must Be Dutiful

Each attribute is followed by a set of learning objectives that reflect consensus on the contribution that the medical school experience should make toward achievement of those attributes. The learning objectives are purposefully broad in scope and general in nature since they are intended to provide a frame of reference for guiding medical schools in developing their own objectives.

*Roger Bulger, M.D.; Eric Cassell, M.D.; Rita Charon, M.D.;Robert Coles, M.D.; Daniel Federman, M.D.; Leon Kass, M.D.; Kenneth Ludmerer, M.D.; Edmund Pellegrino, M.D.; Arnold Relman, M.D.; James Todd, M.D.